The music industry wants more from LimeWire than what the United States owes to Americans and other countries across the globe.

On May 11, 2010, the music industry won its battle against LimeWire LLC, as the court found that the company had induced multiple users of the LimeWire P2P file-sharing program to infringe the copyrights of Warner Bros Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Capitol Records and ten other labels. The litigation is now in the damage phase, with a trial on damages scheduled for May 2, 2011. The record companies are demanding damages ranging from $400 billion to an insane $75 trillion.

But in a 14-page opinion signed on March 10 (pdf), United States District Judge Kimba Wood labeled the record companies' damages request as "absurd" and contrary to copyright laws. Previously the plaintiffs argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. Given that LimeWire had over 50 million users per month downloading millions of files a day, the resulting damages would be "staggering."

"As it stands now, Defendants face a damage award that 'could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not over a billion dollars),'" the judge said. "Indeed, if one multiplies the maximum statutory damage award ($150,000) by approximately 10,000 post-1972 works, Defendants face a potential award of over a billion dollars in statutory damages alone. If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions."

In essence, take the 50 million LimeWire users and multiply that number with the maximum statutory damage award of $150,000. The resulting number is the staggering $7.5 trillion USD. That would mean LimeWire would owe just over half of the national debt which now trickles over $14 trillion and is steadily climbing. "Absurd" is an ideal word for the music industry's demands based on those numbers.

"As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877,'" Wood added. "The absurdity of this result is one of the factors that has motivated other courts to reject Plaintiffs' damages theory."

By the end of the court order, the judge declared that the thirteen record labels are entitled to a single statutory damage award from LimeWire per work infringed, regardless of how many individual users directly infringed that particular work.

"We were pleased that the judge followed both the law and the logic in reaching the conclusion that she did," said LimeWire attorney Joseph Baio of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in a statement to Law.com. "As the judge said in her opinion, when the copyright law was initiated, legislatures couldn't possibly conceive of what the world would become with the internet. As such, you couldn't use legislative history. Instead, the overarching issue is reasonableness in order to avoid absurd and possibly unconstitutional outcome."

In jest, Baio added that the total sum the record companies wanted from LimeWire would be better spent paying off the nation's debt and investing in healthcare.

The D.C. judge who sued his dry cleaners for $65 million in damages broke down in tears yesterday while testifying about the emotional pain of losing his suit pants.

A trial began pitting Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge, against Custom Dry Cleaners and the store’s owners, Jin and Soo Chung. The courtroom was packed with members of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association and reporters from at least five countries, according to the WaPo’s Marc Fisher, whose column in April first turned us on to this case. (For prior Law Blog coverage, click here, here and here.)

“Never before in recorded history have a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices,” Pearson said in his opening. “You will search the D.C. archives in vain for a case of more egregious or willful conduct,” he said later.

Quick backstory: Pearson brought five suits in for alterations because he needed the pants let out. One of the suits came back without pants. Pearson sued under the city’s consumer protection law. He got to his $65 million damages claim, which he lowered last week to $54 million, through a formula that penalized the cleaners $18,000 for each day a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign hung from the store.

Pearson said he had no choice but to take on “the awesome responsibility” of suing the Chungs on behalf of every D.C. resident, reported the WaPo. Pearson kept referring to himself as “we.” Said Judge Judith Bartnoff: “Mr. Pearson, you are not a ‘we.’ You are an ‘I.’”

One of Pearson’s witnesses said the Chungs weren’t so warm and fuzzy. A woman who had complained about her cleaning said Mr. Chung chased her out of the store. “At 89, I’m not ready to be chased,” she said. “But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews.”

The cleaner’s lawyer, Christopher Manning, described Pearson as embittered, having emerged from recent divorce with financial problems and having held a grudge against the cleaners from a prior run-in. When did Pearson cry? Here, as described by the WaPo:

. . . but as he came to the part about when Soo Chung finally told him she had found the missing pants, the tale of the $10.50 alteration that went awry proved to be too much.

“These are not my pants,” Pearson recalled telling Chung when she handed him a pair of gray pants with cuffs. “I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs.”

“And she said, ‘These are your pants.’ ”

Pearson paused. He struggled to breathe deeply. He could not continue. Pearson blurted a request for a break, stood up, turned around and walked out of the courtroom, tears dripping from his full and reddened eyes.

The trial is expected to end today. Pearson, who is representing himself, has asked for attorney’s fees at a rate between $390 and $425 an hour.

Shogun

03-25-2011, 06:20 PM

Would pay great money for that video

Hog Farmer

03-25-2011, 06:20 PM

Here's the deal asswipes.

YOU CANNOT CONCEIVE of the shit the RIAA is capable of stirring up.

I was ****ing the daughter of their Vice President last week at one of Lindsay Lohan's bender parties.

And what he told me after I made her blast a few times was that THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS BEFORE.

ALL PARTIES INVOLVED ARE ****S

YOU ALL ARE ****S

****S ****S ****S

(Is that what we've been missing the past week?)

ROFL Pretty close. I miss Dane already.

MoreLemonPledge

03-25-2011, 06:21 PM

ROFL ROFL ROFL

Here's the deal asswipes.

YOU CANNOT CONCEIVE of the shit the RIAA is capable of stirring up.

I was ****ing the daughter of their Vice President last week at one of Lindsay Lohan's bender parties.

And what he told me after I made her blast a few times was that THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS BEFORE.

ALL PARTIES INVOLVED ARE ****S

YOU ALL ARE ****S

LMAO LMAO LMAO

****S ****S ****S

:LOL:

(Is that what we've been missing the past week?)

FYP

Baby Lee

03-25-2011, 06:36 PM

Well I see that a punch of pattie's asslickers are just yuckin' it up over here.

Demonpenz

03-25-2011, 08:00 PM

Listen you fucksticks. The thing is you don't know is It costs money to put out a Six Pence Non The richer album. Shit you wouldn't believe goes on. IT COSTS 10000000 to get them into the studio 100000000 to get the rights to a song that was last used in Honey I married an Axe Murderer and even then the keygrips get fired. So while you guys are having a great ole time these artists are sucking their own dicks for Protein just for enough energy to provide a golden dildo to the best guitar player of our Era....Kip Winger